


Sonata Form

by earlgay_milktea



Category: High School Musical: The Musical: The Series (TV)
Genre: Complicated Feelings Toward Pianos, Disney is a coward, Fluff, Light Angst, M/M, Romance, i think, tim ferrero rocher notice me please
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-11
Updated: 2020-03-11
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:21:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23104675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlgay_milktea/pseuds/earlgay_milktea
Summary: Seb hates piano.Alternatively: a story about repressed resentments toward piano and finding joy in new musical endeavours and also being gay.
Relationships: Seb Matthew-Smith & Carlos Rodriguez, Seb Matthew-Smith/Carlos Rodriguez
Comments: 8
Kudos: 48





	Sonata Form

**Author's Note:**

> AU-ish where Seb is a bit sadder and Carlos is a bit meaner but they have their happy endings.
> 
> ft. my repressed resentment toward piano 
> 
> DONT ASK ME WHEN IN CANON THIS TAKES PLACE I DO NOT KNOW
> 
> I WOKE UP IN A HAZE AND WROTE THIS WITH THREE (3) EXAMS LOOMING ON THE HORIZON BECAUSE I AM A PARAGON OF RESPONSIBILITY 
> 
> also i know nothing about American schools please tell me if I got anything wrong.  
> signed, an Australian high-schooler

**Introduction.**

Seb hates piano.

This is not a fact that many people know. His family, for instance, are still under the impression that he’s the same starry-faced kid who performs in concerts every second month and receives prizes for half of them. There’s a collection of plastic golden trophies gathering dust at the back of his closet. Remnants of a childhood passion that bloomed too fast and too bright, like fireworks; beautiful but ephemeral. When his mother asked where they were, he’d smiled and said: “I’m just freeing up some space.”

A grand piano sits in his living room. It’s a magnificent thing; all sleek hardwood and shiny, laminated edges. Sometimes, he sits down and plays a bit. Light, airy melodies, skipping rhythms. Lively in a way that he was never allowed to be. Classical music does that to a person. You start off by learning things like _restraint_ and _moderation_ and once they’ve been ingrained into the grooves of your fingers, they tell you to _show more expression._ Everything is dictated by the score. If it tells you to play cheerfully, even if you want nothing more than to tear apart the sheet music, you do it. The player does not hold authority. A part of Seb is cautious, even now, a year after stopping his lessons, of being _too loud, too much._

There’s only so many times he can be told to reign in his passion. There’s only so many times he can swallow down that flame, that dizzying desire to abandon all pretense and just _hammer_ on the keys. 

Eventually, that flame had swallowed him from the inside out. Burnout was a bitch. 

But when Carlos looked him in the eye, head tilted and considering—like Seb was something to puzzle out, like there was something tangled in his hair, in the labyrinth of veins criss-crossing beneath his palm, in the tangled feelings that resurfaced whenever he looked at a piano—and asked him to play for rehearsals, Seb agreed. 

He doesn’t know why he did that.

“Are you good at sight-reading?” Carlos had asked. He was leaned against one side of the piano with the easy grace of a dancer. Seb absently noted this, too busy inspecting the sheet music of 'Stick to the Status Quo' to pay much attention. 

“Yeah, I’m good,” he muttered. 

“Are you just saying you’re good, or are you actually good?” 

“Actually good,” Seb said defensively. There’s a newspaper article with his prodigious twelve-year-old self pinned up in his living room, somewhere. He has tried to take it down, but his mom insists it should stay. 

Carlos narrowed his eyes. “I’m not sure if I believe you.”

Seb’s pulse accelerated, fingers clenched on the lid of the piano, and Carlos’s eyebrows were raised, expectant. 

“I’ll prove it,” Seb said before he can think. He yanked open the lid, put his hands down, and the opening chords rang out, harsh and loud. 

E flat major. A simple key. He could play that scale in his sleep. It’s not a complicated accompaniment by any means. The accidentals might catch a beginner off-guard, but Seb had over a decade of lessons underneath his belt. He used to perform in recitals. Boring, stuffy things. Their seats were always too high, and the keys were always too cold, and his hands would end up sweating, but he wouldn’t slip, he couldn’t slip, if he made a single mistake it will all be over—

Seb’s fingers slammed down on the last few notes. His heart was almost beating out of his chest. He was breathing too hard, too loud in the sudden silence. He lowered his hands, slowly, and looked around. 

His castmates were staring with open-mouthed awe. 

“Holy shit,” Natalie said. “That was amazing.”

“You’re so good. _So_ good. I didn’t even know you played piano; how did you sound that good?” Ashlyn was smiling like a sunbeam, and when her hands reached out to ruffle his hair, he accepted it. 

“You’re so talented, Seb!” someone else said, and he had to smoothen down the reflexive scowl he reserved for situations like this. Talent doesn’t take a person this far. 

Various people stepped up to compliment him, and he smiled through the whole ordeal. He was grateful for their encouraging words, he truly was, but the attention grated on him. He hadn’t played seriously in over a year. Maybe the version of him two years ago might deserve the praise, but right now, he was a husk of a musician, the ashy remnants of a child prodigy that rose too quickly and fell just as fast. He should learn a new instrument. The saxophone, maybe. Rebirth like a phoenix. Join the school orchestra. Play in a group like he had always wanted to. Piano was a lonely instrument, and the better you were at it, the lonelier it got.

Eventually, everyone tapered off to do their own business. It was the first day of rehearsal, after all, and lines still need to be familiarised, dance steps marked out, and character dynamics to be constructed. Musicals were a messy business. 

Carlos hadn’t moved. His eyes traced Seb from head-to-toe. There was a terrifying sort of thrill in the knowledge that you were being inspected, being held up to the light with a magnifying glass like a scientific specimen, examined from all angles. Seb didn’t know what Carlos is looking for, but apparently, he found it, because he smiled—and it changed his whole face, opened it up like a rose to the sun—and patted Seb’s shoulder. It was a fleeting touch, but he still felt it down to his bones. 

“I guess you’ll do,” Carlos said, detached himself from the piano, and walked off. 

Seb stared after his back. _“What.”_

**Exposition.**

There’s something birdlike about the way Carlos holds himself; something in the dart of his eyes, his unflinching gaze, the arch of his arms and the way his bony wrists cross in his lap he sits down, perched on a chair with impeccable posture. He’s high-strung on the best of days and scathing on the worst. Every time people start warming to him, he’d do something, or say something, or criticise their form too harshly, and they’d be back at square one. Seb can’t help but be reminded of a wounded animal, snapping at every hand that tries to reach out. A bird caught in a glue trap. Maybe a crane. Tall and lean, with a beak that could gut a man. 

But when Seb tries to bring this up with the other cast members, he’s not sure he gets his point across. 

“He sure pecks like one,” remarks Rico, who is in the middle of a split. Seb’s also supposed to be warming up, but he’s just half-heartedly doing high knees. It’s the fifth, or the sixth rehearsal. They’re all beginning to blur together at this point. Carlos’s choreography is too advanced for a bunch of high-schoolers, and Seb marks the weeks by the way his muscles ache and recover, ache and recover, rise and repeat. 

“That’s not what I meant,” he says. 

“Sure, it isn’t,” snorts Rico. He’s a line of taut muscle on the wooden floor, all practiced tension in a way that speaks of years of lessons. Seb, who mainly dances as a hobby, feels woefully pale in comparison. 

“I think Carlos is trying his best.”

“Yeah, well, so are we. He doesn’t need to freak out every time one of us forgets a move. We’re not all theatre nuts like him.”

“Hey,” says Seb, frowning. 

“I’m not wrong,” Rico points out, infuriatingly smug, and drops into another split. 

Ashlyn offers him a placating smile. “He’s very skilled, but he has to realise not all of us can keep up.” Rico nods furiously. She swiftly knocks him over the head. “Rico, you’ve done dance for years.”

“I have a concert next week, give my legs a break.”

“Break time’s over!” Carlos’s voice rings clear like a bell through the room, and Rico grudgingly gets to his feet, rolling his neck as he does so. The popping noises make Seb vaguely sick to his stomach. He used to crack his knuckles before major performances, twisting them slightly too hard to rid himself of jitters. They had made the same noises. 

“Seb, if you could do the honours?” Carlos phrases it as a request, but the firm set of his mouth turns it into a command. 

“Way ahead of you,” Seb mutters underneath his breath, bitter in a way he can’t explain. 

Carlos glares at him, quick and vicious, as he makes his way over to the piano. Carlos must’ve overheard. Oops.

“Do you have something you want to share with the class?” he hisses, when Seb passes by close enough to hear.

“Nothing you haven’t said already,” Seb replies with forced cheer, and ignores the way Carlos’s stare turns acidic. He lowers himself onto the bench, positions his fingers above the keys—careful as ever, lightly, making sure to keep his posture—and plays. 

**Development.**

It’s not that Seb dislikes playing for rehearsals. There’s a power in having a dozen dancers move along to a rhythm that _you’re_ in charge of, and he would be lying if he said it hasn’t done wonders for his ego. It’s satisfying. It makes him content. Sometimes, when he plays a particularly tricky part, Carlos glances at him from the corner of his eye, an approving tilt to his lips. He always looks away before Seb can catch him. 

They’re alone in the rehearsal room. Everyone has dispersed already, the sounds of their footsteps long gone. It’s been a long day, and now, as Seb glances out the window, it’s about evening. The sky has gone a shade of eggshell blue, fragile and gauzy, a precursor to the bleeding sunset. 

Carlos is going over dance steps. He’s impossibly elegant, the arches of his arms and wrists echoing something birdlike. A crest of swan wings. A murmuration of swallows. He hums underneath his breath as he moves, and his voice dips and swells along with him; soaring in perfect time. 

Seb’s supposed to be practising the parts for the curtain call. It’s probably the hardest part of the entire score; changing keys and time signatures at the drop of a hat. There’s a blistering glissando further down, and maybe he could’ve pulled it off a year ago, but right now all he can manage is a weak descent halfway down the keyboard. 

If only he could be good enough, if only he hadn’t stopped going to lessons and stopped performing and stopped being so infuriatingly average—

“Seb,” Carlos says, breaking him out of his reverie. “Can you play Status Quo for me? Bar one-hundred and ninety-eight.”

“Sure thing.” Seb readies his fingers, bracing them over the correct keys, but Carlos interrupts him.

“Don’t you need the sheet music?” His hand is awkwardly raised, as if he could conjure up the score from thin air, and the crease between his brows is adorably bewildered. 

Seb resists the urge to laugh out loud. “I memorised it.”

“The whole musical?!”

“Well, I’ve only gotten through Act 1 so far—”

“No way.”

“Yes way,” he says. “I could’ve memorised it a lot sooner, but I can’t keep my family up all night with this racket.”

“You know you don’t have to, right?” Carlos comes up to lean on the piano, a mirror of his position when he’d asked, _are you just saying you’re good, or are you actually good,_ his dark stare sweeping over Seb, leaving something tingly and buzzing in its wake, like static electricity. 

“Well, you know me,” Seb smiles, but his heart’s not in it. “Always going above and beyond.”

Carlos makes a noncommittal sound. “I don’t, actually.”

“What?”

His gaze darts away, staring at some point beyond Seb’s left shoulder instead. His fingers tap against the hardwood, restlessly, a _clack-clack-clack_ that sounds too loud for an empty room. 

“I don’t know you,” he says. “I don’t know you at all.”

Seb blinks. “Um, okay?”

“I don’t know anyone in the cast,” Carlos admits. The back of his neck is flushed, and his fingers won’t stop tapping. Seb watches them fall and rise, pendulum-like, wave-like, neat and poised like the rest of the body they belong to. 

“Maybe you should get to know them,” he points out, very obviously. 

Carlos gives him a flat stare. “And how well is that going?”

Seb casts his mind back to their rehearsals, to the awkward way Carlos would hover on the fringes of groups during breaks, to the overly exuberant greetings he’d call out, to the strained smiles he’d give people whenever they brushed him off or shrunk away.

“Huh,” muses Seb. “You were trying to make friends all along?”

“It’s not my fault you’re all dense,” he retorts, but it comes out snappy and petulant. He pulls away from the piano and turns toward the door, but Seb, in a moment of clarity, makes a decision and he pulls Carlos back with a hand around his wrist. 

“Hold on,” he says. Carlos freezes. The air feels strange around them, stirring with something too abstract to name, and it’s not unfamiliar, but it’s confusing in this context. Seb does his best to ignore it. It’s not difficult when Carlos turns around, his head tilted to the side, birdlike, scrutinising. Seb looks away from the brown of his eyes, but then he’s faced with the reality of Carlos’s wrist in his grip, looser now, almost gentle, a cool counterpoint to Seb’s sweaty palms. 

“Making friends isn’t that hard,” he says. 

“Easy for _you_ to say,” Carlos snaps. There’s weight behind the ‘you’ and there’s a dizzying intensity to the way he stares at Seb, but Seb doesn’t want to think about that right now. Not yet. 

“I could help you,” he offers. “I’ll be your friend. I’ll introduce you to the others.”

Something startled and pleased flashes across Carlos’s face. He’s unguarded for a moment, all his pretences and walls toppling, and it strikes Seb just how _young_ he looks, just how much of a teenager he really is, like the rest of them. He’s so used to looking up at Carlos. He’s so used to watching Carlos from afar, watching Carlos watch him from the corner of his eye, smiling in silent approval.

Seb raises his head and looks at Carlos. _Really_ looks at Carlos. Neat hair, skewed glasses, clear eyes. He remembers seeing Carlos in a hallway before an exam, furiously flicking through palm-cards, and he wondered what it would be like to have that gaze on him, to capture that laser-focus for himself. He didn’t have to wonder, then. 

“I promise,” he says, holding out his pinkie. 

“What are you, a five-year-old?” Carlos taunts, but when he holds out his hand, they link fingers and shake on it. 

**Recapitulation.**

Seb isn’t keeping track of the number of rehearsals, but he thinks they’re hitting the four-month mark. His muscles are no longer sore; he’s adapted to the rigorous choreography, all its complicated twists and turns and footwork, and he’d kept his promise as best as he could; dragging Carlos into group conversations, and slowly seeing the iciness melt from his facade like frost from a flower, and it transforms him into something a little kinder, less high-strung, more like the teenage boy he actually is. 

The novelty of playing for the cast wears off quickly. 

“Play that part again,” says Carlos, and Seb feels like a dish towel that’s been wrung too many times, and his hands are starting to move sluggishly in a way that speaks of over-practice, but nonetheless, he nods, and plays on. 

He hadn’t bothered to memorise Act 2. He wonders if that’s a failure on his part. He wonders if a real pianist would’ve already known the score back-to-back, with how frequently he’s been playing it. He’s mastered the glissando at this point, though it’d taken a week of torn skin and Band-Aids. It’s still healing, actually, but the Band-Aids are annoying, so he’d taken them off early. The skin around his fingernails are raw. It reminds, viscerally, of his first experience before a concert. Nervous energy bubbling from his gut like a carbonated drink gone in the wrong direction. Restless pacing. Re-reading the sheet music, even though he’d already mastered it. Doubt and anxiety are close neighbours. Seb had taken to cracking his knuckles, and when that hadn’t been enough, picking at his cuticles, and then a flaky bit underneath his thumb, and then he’d torn off a painful chunk, panicked at the sight of blood, and stuck his thumb in his mouth. At the end of it all, the skin around his thumb turned pink and tender, with the slightest suggestion of blood underneath his nails. 

His piano teacher had scolded him, later. Hands were a pianist’s most important asset, she’d said, and Seb hadn’t the heart to tell her that he wasn’t actually a full-fledged pianist. 

He’d been thirteen. Looking back, he should’ve seen the inevitable burnout. He should’ve predicted it, and taken breaks more often, and stopped entering competitions. He should’ve considered playing something for _himself,_ not just for his teacher or requests from his family. He should’ve played showtunes. He should’ve played backing tracks to pop songs and sung along to them. He should’ve done a lot of things.

The school orchestra has rehearsals every Wednesday afternoon in the hall. Sometimes, he stays behind and watches. The students play with gusto, from the boy on the triangle to the girl blaring on the tuba to the boy skipping along on the xylophone. They find joy in their instrument. Seb wonders how long it’s been since he’d possessed that same internal flame, that same passion that fuelled him to pore over music theory and practice until his hands were sore. It’s a future that could’ve happened. It’s a world that could’ve been his, had the circumstances been different. But the past is rigid, the present is built on its foundations, and so, Sebastian Matthew-Smith, aged seventeen, sits at a piano and feels absolutely nothing. 

“Rehearsal’s over!” Carlos calls, startling Seb. “Good work today, everybody!” 

The students file out of the room in dribs and drabs. Some of them linger on their phones, some stay to chat with Miss Jenn, some clap Carlos on the shoulder and tell him what a good choreographer he is—well, okay, only Nini does that—but they eventually leave.

Seb doesn’t move from the piano. He knows he should practice, but he also knows that if he sits here for a moment longer, he might cry, or throw something, or worse. 

“Scooch over,” says Carlos, and Seb moves on autopilot. There’s suddenly a warm torso pressed up against his, and he barely stifles a yelp. 

“What are you—”

“Something’s off with you,” Carlos declares. His tone offers no room for argument. “Actually, something’s always kind of dodgy with you, but right now it’s a different kind of dodgy.”

“You think I’m dodgy?” splutters Seb. 

“You’re very agreeable,” says Carlos. “And always cheerful. And you never get mad at me for being bossy even when I deserve it. You have to admit it’s a little fishy.”

Seb shrugs. He doesn’t know what Carlos wants him to say. “I guess I’m just easy-going?”

“Sure,” says Carlos, not sounding sure in the slightest. 

“Cool.” Seb makes to stand up, but Carlos yanks on his arm so he topples onto the bench again. 

“What the hell was that for?” he snaps.

“If you don’t want to play for rehearsal, you can just tell me,” says Carlos. There’s concern swimming in his eyes, and beneath that, something darker, almost indecipherable. Seb thinks he knows what it is, but the knowledge of it makes his palms sweaty and his chest itch, so he doesn’t comment on it. 

In the silence of the room, in the absence of people and the way the sky swirls blue-orange out the window, nothing feels real. It’s easier to lie to himself. 

“I _do_ want to play,” he says. 

“Stop lying.”

“I’m not lying.”

Carlos grips him by the shoulders. “Look me in the eye and tell me that.”

Seb looks up, and there’s a long moment, like the unfurling of flower petals in the sunlight, or the slow spread of a bird’s wings, then he sees Carlos’s gaze briefly drop to his mouth, the weight of that stare pressing down like a thumb, and Seb parts his lips all the same and repeats, “I’m not lying,” but his voice comes wrong, too hesitant. 

Carlos draws a breath. Lets it out. Lets it hover between them, tenuous, shivering in the air like a plane of thin glass. Seb doesn’t know if he’ll be able to leave it unbroken.

“You really suck at lying,” Carlos says. 

“God, shut up.”

Carlos snorts out a laugh. It’s a bit lovely, like the rest of him. “I’m not going to bite your head off if you tell me you don’t want to play anymore. We’ll just make do with instrumentals on YouTube.”

“But I can’t just leave it there,” Seb says, frustrated. “I’ve been doing okay so far! I don’t know why I got so tired all of a sudden—”

“You were tired all along,” Carlos interrupts, and it knocks the wind out of Seb. “You just got worse at hiding it.”

He opens his mouth. Closes it. “That’s—”

“Remember what I said about you being a shit liar?” Carlos’s tone is uppity, but not malicious. There’s a dry, sardonic twist to his mouth. “It’ll be a lot easier if you stop, y’know? Lying to me. And yourself, probably.”

Seb heaves a sigh. He’s exhausted. It’s the sort of exhaustion that seems to leak, tacky with poison, out of his very bones. Childhood prodigy, star student, the biggest fish in this small, small pond. He wonders how far he’s fallen. 

“I wanted to be a pianist,” he says. “I had the talent, I had the work ethic and a great teacher, but— I just couldn’t continue. I haven’t played piano seriously in over a year. This is the most I’ve played in a long time.”

And there it is: years of musical note keychains, jangling at the zippers of his backpack, years of staring at black-and-white scores until they were burnished into the backs of his eyelids, fuzzy afterimages that appeared every time he blinked. Every single day of freshman year, the smell of carpet in his practice room and cold ivory beneath his fingers, melodies being weaved day in and day out, crisp and perfect but bringing no joy to him, no joy at all. All of it compressed into six words, past tense: I wanted to be a pianist. 

“Burnout?” Carlos asks softly. 

Seb nods. “And other stuff. I guess.”

“I’m sorry I made that request.”

“Don’t be.”

“But you hate it—”

“I don’t,” Seb cuts him off swiftly. “I don’t think I actually hated piano.” He takes a deep breath, lets it out, and the knot in his chest loosens a little. “I think it was the pressure. I didn’t have a choice in what I played. I had to be perfect, you know? I’m the oldest boy in my family. My siblings looked up to me, and my parents were so proud and I just— couldn’t let them down.”

Carlos’s expression is open and concerned. “You don’t always have to be perfect.”

Seb barks out a laugh. It catches on the lump in his throat. “Try telling that to fifteen-year-old me.” 

“I’m serious,” Carlos says. “If you hold yourself to impossible standards, you’ll never be happy doing anything.”

“How did you get so good at dance, then?” Seb bites out. 

“I love dance,” Carlos snaps. “I don’t dance for anybody else but myself, and I offered to choreograph an entire fucking musical because _I love doing it._ Why did you want to be a pianist? Just because you’re good at it?”

“No,” Seb says.

“Did you feel like it was your only option?” Carlos continues, relentless. “Did you only continue because you were obligated to? Did your parents push you too hard? Your teacher?”

“No!”

Carlos’s gaze makes him feel like he’s being flayed alive, like he’s being stripped down to nothing but his bloody, beating heart, like he’s being seen as the lost, confused boy he truly is. 

“You loved it, didn’t you?” Carlos asks, and something clicks into place inside of Seb, like the decisive twist of a key in a lock. 

“I did,” he breathes. “I loved it because it gave me— freedom. It told me I didn’t need words to speak. It was like another language. I wanted to learn it, I wanted to make something of my own.”

“And did you?”

Seb shook his head. “All my pieces were chosen for me.”

Carlos hisses a breath through his teeth. “That’s a bit unfair.”

Seb laughs wetly, swipes a hand across his eyes. “It’s fine. That’s all in the past, now.”

“I’m basically forcing you to play for every rehearsal—”

“It’s kinda nice, actually,” says Seb. He tries for a smile, and the corners of Carlos’s mouth tug up, too. “It just brings back bad memories.”

“If you want to take a break from playing, _do not_ hesitate to tell me.” Carlos reaches for his hands. He clasps them between his own, tenderly, like he’s cradling something precious, and he stares at Seb with such conviction, such earnestness, it sends a dull ache pulsing beneath his breastbone.

“I want to take the next two weeks off, if that’s alright,” Seb says. 

Carlos nods. He then cocks his head to the side, the action echoing of something birdlike, and asks, “Is there anything else you want?”

Seb pauses. He doesn’t know what he wants, he thinks, abruptly, looking at Carlos looking back at him. And then Carlos smiles, and Seb thinks: that. Surety bubbles up inside him like a fountain; a type of secureness he’s never felt before, and his whole body is suddenly alight with furious longing. He brings up a hand to Carlos’s shoulder, realises halfway what he’s trying to do and nearly swallows his heart where it’s risen to his mouth. He keeps going anyways, because he’s nothing if not a boy who commits.

There’s knowing in Carlos’s eyes. There’s a twitch to his mouth, a triumphant glint in his eyes like a match being struck to life, and when Seb draws closer, he leans back because he’s an ass, and laughs when Seb lets out a frustrated noise. 

He kisses Carlos a bit too fast, a bit too hard, and Carlos’s hands fly to the nape of his neck, pressing in, anchoring, searing against bare skin, and kisses back. When they draw apart, there’s a long moment stretching like candle-warmed wax, seconds pooling around them in a slow, sugary haze. It’s all in the details; the sweep of Carlos’s hair, the bob of his throat as he swallows, the slant of his eyelashes, the glow of fluorescents on his pink bottom lip. Seb is helpless to his pull, like a satellite in Earth’s orbit, like opposing poles of a magnet. His pulse flickers like an open flame. He leans in, and lets it consume him.

**Coda.**

“Your hair is a mess,” is the first thing Carlos greets him with. 

“I woke up too late today,” Seb pants, his face red with exertion. He’d slept through his alarm and missed his usual bus, which would be fine on any other day, but orchestra auditions were obnoxiously early, and—

“Pull yourself together,” Carlos says, laying a hand on his shoulder. “C’mon. Just breathe. You’re gonna be okay.”

And Seb does just that, pulling air through his lungs over and over again until he doesn’t feel like keeling over. But they’re wasting time just standing around, and when Seb points this out, Carlos only rolls his eyes. 

“We still have twenty minutes,” he says. “It’s enough time to walk there. And for me to fix your hair.”

“You don’t have to—”

“I can’t be seen kissing somebody who looks like he’s dived through a bush,” Carlos says imperiously. “I’m doing us both a favour. Turn around.” He raises his eyebrows expectantly. Seb sighs and turns around. 

Carlos’s fingers card through Seb’s hair, heartachingly gentle. For a minute, they stand there, and Seb tries hard to keep himself still and not lean into the touch because if he does, he’s definitely going to be late for auditions. 

“Done,” Carlos declares. He spins Seb around with a light touch, directing him to his reflection in a nearby class window. “You can thank me later.”

Seb barely gives himself a cursory glance before turning and leaning forward, savouring the brief startle in Carlos’s eyes before pressing a kiss to his cheek, high on the bone to feel the heat of Carlos’s blush.

“Later was fine,” Carlos splutters. 

“I know,” Seb says, smiling. “I’ll thank you properly later. You’re the best.” He coaxes another kiss from Carlos, this time from his lips, before running off. 

The morning is brighter than it’s ever been. In fifteen minutes, Seb is going to join his first ensemble. In two days, he will play piano in a group for the first time, and he will rekindle the ashes of a lost childhood passion, and he will find joy.


End file.
